Tripura, Mizoram may depanel AMRI Hospital

The devastating fire at AMRI (Advanced Medicare and Research Institute) Hospital in Kolkata may force the Tripura and Mizoram governments to remove it from their list of referral hospitals, officials said in Agartala on Sunday.

Patients from several states in the northeast and employees of state-owned ONGC head to the hospital as AMRI is empanelled as a referral hospital for Tripura, Mizoram and other state governments in the northeast, apart from ONGC.

"We would consider at a high level meeting in Agartala next week whether the state government would delist AMRI from the list of referral hospitals," a Tripura health department official said.

Tripura health minister Tapan Chakraborty told reporters that the matter of referring patients from the state to AMRI would now be reconsidered because of the "horrible tragedy".

Similar views were expressed by Mizoram.

"If private hospitals like AMRI do not properly care for the patients, we would not refer our patients to these places," a Mizoram government official told reporters in Aizawl.

ONGC spokesman Rathindra Kumar Deb told IANS : "AMRI is in our registry among the 10 to 12 empanelled hospitals in Kolkata. But after Friday's tragedy we would not advise our employees to go there."

In the worst fire tragedy in any hospital in India, 91 patients and staffers were killed in Kolkata's well-known AMRI Hospital when the blaze engulfed its annexe building early Friday, trapping dozens of helpless patients.